Evenings Upstairs presents: Kentucky's Trail of Tears

Kentucky’s Trail of Tears, presented by Alice Murphree, president of the Kentucky Trail of Tears Association and board member of the National Trail of Tears Association.

This year marks the 175 Anniversary of the Trail of Tears. Imagine more than 15,000 Cherokee people being forced to march across Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri, Illinois and Arkansas. In 1838-39 they walked hundreds of miles and were taken on wagons, steamboats and flatboats to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Their ordeal is one to remember.

This long, cruel relocation has become known as The Trail of Tears and by Native Americans as “The Trail Where They Cried.” The impact to the Cherokee was devastating. Hundreds of Cherokee died during their trip west, and thousands more perished from the consequences of relocation. This tragic chapter in American and Cherokee history culminated the implementation of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which mandated the removal of all American Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River to lands in the West.

So many people only think of the Trail of Tears as the detachments that went overland. Many people do not realize that Paducah played a role in the removal as a site in the water route. Murphree will discuss the significance of the Ohio River and the water routes.